(avg. read time: 5–10 mins.)
As much as various groups have tried to work out a systematic portrait of eschatological judgment and all its constituent parts, the Bible itself offers no systematic picture of such. There are several motifs that are commonly associated with eschatological judgment, such as resurrection, but there is no comprehensively laid out picture in any one text. Such attempts to bring together all the diverse pictures can be interesting, but it is more crucial to understand what each text is saying than to try to conform each text to another framework. Otherwise, we risk not adequately exploring what each text says in its context, how it is functioning and significant in that context, and thus what is being conveyed in the particular instance with the judgment language. These are aspects I hope to bring some light to concerning a most fascinating promise of Jesus to the Twelve in Matt 19:28 // Luke 22:28–30, wherein he says they will participate in the judgment of Israel.
What is initially significant about this teaching from Jesus is that it has no precedent in the OT or in Second Temple literature. It fits into larger ideas that do have precedent, such as the expectation of eschatological judgment itself and the regathering of the twelve tribes of Israel. But there is nothing like the specific notion that twelve individuals would have judgment seats to participate in the judgment of Israel. While the Twelve would have a frame of reference for the larger eschatological picture, this role that they are said to fulfill in that picture is something that, as far as we can tell, they first heard from Jesus. It is thus to Jesus’s teaching that we must turn to understand the context that makes sense of this promise.
Matthew 19:28
The first time we encounter this teaching is in Matthew’s version where it appears as part of the episode with the rich man Jesus instructs to sell his possessions in Matt 19:16–30. After the interaction with the rich man, Jesus describes how impossibly difficult it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God, yet how with God all things are possible. Peter struggles with this teaching and asks what there will be for him and his fellows who have left everything to follow Jesus. Jesus’s response is mostly the same across all versions in terms of promising that anyone who has left various things to follow him will receive much more in the kingdom along with everlasting life.
But only in Matthew’s version is a promise specifically for the Twelve in 19:28 included before the more general promise. The setting for this promise is the παλιγγενεσία, often translated as “regeneration” or “renewal,” and can also be understood as “re-genesis,” “creation again,” or “re-creation.” It is also described as the time in which the Son Man sits on his throne of glory. It is interesting that this promise follows Jesus predicting his death and resurrection. The disciples had yet to grasp the reality of his coming death, and so they did not grasp the significance of his resurrection either. But we who live on the other side of those events know that the resurrection was necessary to link the predictions of Jesus’s death with the promises of him sitting on his throne stated here as well as in 25:31 and 26:64 (cf. 28:18). In those other texts as well, the sitting on the throne indicates both reigning and judgment. In these ways and others, Jesus, Matthew, and the other Gospel writers present the major gospel events as a three-stage narrative of death, resurrection, and exaltation. Given that we are dealing with a re-creation here, one can see how Jesus’s resurrection becomes a pattern for all of creation, so that when the current world order is destroyed (5:18; 24:35), it too will be given new life on the other side of death in the consummation of the kingdom of heaven. As I will have occasion to explore another time, particularly in regard to Revelation, Jesus’s resurrection is the new creation writ small and the new creation is Jesus’s resurrection writ large.
The notion that these twelve disciples in particular have a special role relating to Israel fits with what scholars have often observed about Jesus’s intentionality in forming the Twelve around himself as relating to the reconstitution and reunion of Israel. But it is a picture in which Jesus is at the center. God’s people—from the days of the patriarchs to the present time—are constituted around Jesus, rather than biological descent from the patriarchs (7:21–27; 8:8–12; 10; 11:20–30; 12:39–42; 13:27–30, 37–43, 47–50; 16:24–28; 19:28–30; 21:33–46; 22:1–14; 23:37; 24:31). As such, those who are resurrected to the inheritance God promised the patriarchs are those who are constituted around Jesus as God’s people as the true heirs of the patriarchs. If the general resurrection fulfills God’s promises to the patriarchs and the fulfillment of these promises comes through Jesus—who constitutes the people of God around himself—then resurrection hope itself and the larger complex of hope in the resolution of the ancestral story have a Christocentric shape.
What, then, can we say about the significance of this promise of the Twelve participating in the judgment of Israel in this context? One, it shows that the special role of the Twelve in relation to Israel and the fulfillment of promises thereto will continue on the other side of the resurrection and in relation to the new creation. Two, given the other judgment scene in Matt 25, which we have examined elsewhere, they have such a role in judgment because of their role in proclaiming the gospel to Israel. Three, this promise shows how the Twelve embody the gospel narrative themselves in how they participated in Christ’s faithful life unto death, will yet participate in his resurrection to everlasting life that is God’s designated goal for that way of life, will be exalted to share in his rule (hence they have their own thrones), and for this reason will participate in his judgment. As noted in the aforementioned link, this does not imply their exemption from any judgment, but it does single them out as having a special role designated for the eschatological judgment.
Luke 22:28–30
The next time we see this promise is in a rather different context in Luke. The context is the Last Supper in Luke 22:15–30. Even while Jesus eats the Passover meal with his disciples, he is not only giving it new meaning through the institution of the Eucharist, he is also pointing forward to the coming of the kingdom of God, saying he will not eat of this Passover meal again until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God (22:15–16) and that he will never again drink from the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes (22:18). He then speaks of how he will be betrayed, which leads to one discussion among the disciples as to who the betrayer could be, as well as to another discussion in the opposite direction as they discuss who will be the greatest. As Jesus has done in multiple other contexts before, he lets them know that the greatest among them must be a servant, just as he came as the Master/Lord who serves.
It is then that Jesus says these Twelve, specifically, are those who have remained with him thus far in his trials (indicating that their subsequent abandonment will not ultimately remove the promise because of his reconciliation with them after his resurrection). For such faithfulness, just as the Father granted him a kingdom, he grants them the right to eat and drink with him in his kingdom. He then adds that they will sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.
Although there is no explicit reference to a new creation, this context is still eschatologically charged, and the talk of eating and drinking in the kingdom is reminiscent of kingdom texts like Isa 35. It also assumes bodily transformation and resurrection, particularly for Jesus, as this story also follows after all his predictions of death and resurrection. As such, the implication for the disciples as well is that to share in the eschatological fellowship and bond that represents the everlasting continuation of the relationship with Jesus, they too must be resurrected like Jesus (since they have died before the consummation of the kingdom). But they will not only share in the benefits of the kingdom, including the resurrection to everlasting; they will also share in the rule of the kingdom, hence the reference to them having thrones and sharing in judgment (cf. 22:69). In short, they will embody the same three-stage gospel narrative that Jesus will enact. This has already been signified in this context by the fact that the disciples partake of his flesh and blood through partaking the Eucharist instituted here. This incorporative, identifying, and participatory union exemplified by this meal means sharing in Jesus’s story as a whole, so that a faithful life unto death leads to God’s ultimate affirmation in resurrection to everlasting life and exaltation to share in his reign. But, of course, while this is true of Jesus’s disciples in general, it is true in a special sense for the Twelve, as they have a special role in relation to Israel that goes back to their constitution as the Twelve by Jesus’s action, which will continue in their gospel ministry to Israel, and will culminate in their sharing in the judgment of Israel because they carried the gospel to them.
As we can see, both contexts convey similar messages despite different contexts, but they do so in different ways because of the different contexts. There is a special role reserved for the Twelve in relation to Israel, whereby they become exemplars of what will be true of all those faithful to Christ, of all who make the gospel story their story. This peculiar addition of these twelve individuals as having such a special function in the eschatological expectations vis-à-vis Israel could only happen because of the gospel story, precisely because it has such Christocentric theological influences. Such a peculiar mutation of eschatology also appears in Revelation’s heavenly vision in which we see twenty-four elders to signify the patriarchs of Israel and the Twelve central apostles of Jesus (Rev 4:4, 10; 5:8; 11:16; 19:4), as well as the names of the Twelve inscribed on the twelve foundations of the new Jerusalem (Rev 21:14).
Of course, a curiosity with such promises is that both versions appear in contexts in which Judas is still part of the Twelve. This is no indication of the expectation of his restoration, as Matthew and Luke are quite definitive that his fate is no longer with the rest of the Twelve, as he was never reconciled and his end diverges from the gospel pattern of Jesus. While Matthew does not provide the resolution to this hole in his story, since he does not continue his story beyond Jesus’s ascension, Luke does provide that resolution with his story of Matthias in Acts 1:12–26. The apostles rightly recognized that the function of the Twelve could only be properly carried out with them as the Twelve, not the Eleven. That idea was likely partly informed by this particular promise that they remembered being attached to multiple occasions, where they are to sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. Surely there could not be an empty throne when that hope arrives.